I’ve been remiss in my linking. I know that, this blog hasn’t always been at the forefront of my mind. But I do still read up everything people are contributing about WAR, and the various forums, and for that reason my WCPI contribution for this ‘period’ can only be Warhammer Alliance.

I’ve had some issues with Warhammer Alliance in the past, I don’t think we need to go into those. But, the site has truly become a fan haven, and has gone from strength to strength in terms of community involvement, and producing original content that truly worth reading. It’s become an information hub more than a series of forums. And its front page is now one of my primary stops on the net, and I read all the articles before I even consider heading to the forums.

In the April 2009 US WAR newsletter we get a mention in the sidebar. That’s always a nice shout-out, but still leaves me with a bit of a feeling Mythic are a little out-of-date with some of their fan/community info. Here’s the quotation that actually made me laugh out loud:

“arbitrary, Hawley, and Spinks, three lovely MMO-playin’ ladies”

I’d like to state for the record, that although lovely, Hawley is VERY MUCH a man!

The rest of the newsletter makes really interesting reading though, from podcasts on Land of the Dead, Live Event details for the Beyond the Sands and Rise of the Tomb Kings events, Dungeon details for the Necropolis, and new mounts!!!!!!!

Ok, so the pictures of the new mounts made me a little jealous and giddy, they look amazing (manticore and griffin). But reality soon set in, it’s for the recruit-a-friend programme, which we don’t have in the EU. And you need to recruit 6 subscribers. That’s a hell of a lot. A little bit too much to just fake and buy for yourself, even if you were crazy enough to do so.

Both the EU and US newsletters also have a list of events that the WAR team will be coming to in the coming year, so they’re definitely worth checking out from that angle. The EU team will be at Dreamhack, Cologne Games Day and GameCon, UK Games Day, Paris Festival de Jeu and Poznan Arena Pl.

We’ll be at the London get-together on 9th May from 4pm onwards at the Cittie of York pub in Holborn. If you can make it, pop in and say hi. While Hawley won’t be there since he can’t make it, but at least me and Spinks will be there to show off our authentic female-ness!

Enough niceness, eh? Bloggers, and in can be assumed others in the community, are testing out other games until WAR gets fixed or until the Land of the Dead brings people back to the game. Hell, it’s what I’m doing. I’m even sometimes choosing grinding in LotRO over what it plainly fun about WAR – Tier 1 and an alt on many nights. People are doubting their subscriptions.

And Mythic? Mythic are tied to their desks trying to fix stuff and bring in new stuff that will need fixing with their lesser numbers in QA and elsewhere. The game needs these fixes and changes, and they’ve been promised to us. A number of people I know are pretty excited about Land of the Dead but not really bothered about much before, so this ‘live expansion’ is very important to Mythic, don’t mistake that. If it all goes wrong, it might be the end of a number of subs on both sides of the pond. The community is flagging a little and could do with pepping up.

Not heard of Paul visiting many blogs recently, or even updating his own. And that’s the problem with community involvement, once you start it, people expect it to continue. I expect these luminaries of Mythic to be doing all they used to do, marketing-wise, even when it’s unfeasible from a grander scale. But I’m sure there will be a ramp-up in community chatter and involvement with the Land of the Dead, there needs to be!

I’m finding WAR quite suitable for a casual game, but that also means if something more interesting comes up, WAR gets dropped for the night. I still enjoy the game when I play it, but even that’s somewhat because I’ve disengaged myself from the endgame, I’ve heard too much about it being unsatisfying, and I know I enjoy sleeping, so I don’t go to city sieges or defences, preferring to try new characters and play them through Tiers 1 and 2, safe in the knowledge I have my preferred char at rank 40 just in case I need a top level character.

WAR needs enthusiasm. It needs to be fun. If you’re not enjoying it, try alting, or play another game and keep your eye on info about the ‘expansion’.

It’s been a while since I linked to some of the stories that have kept me amused/captivated and so here’s a catch-up. They’re not all brand new, but that doesn’t mean you caught them or that they’re any less good.

Gaarawarr’s epic PQ trawl is a cautionary tale in madness, but reading it actually made me want to give it a shot. He’s also updated his armour guide to include all the new tokens etc.

Regis is RIGHT, we need recruit-a-friend in the EU. In fact, things have been trundling along fairly quietly on the ol’ EU vs US front, so sometimes it’s worth sitting back and reflecting on how the different treatment has worked out. In some ways it’s ok, but in terms of marketing, Mythic is definitely in front.

Over at Incoming Pull, you can read about WAR’s swan song (ie. city sieges and more disappointment in the game’s end’game)

Snafz gives us a definitive token cost list and reminds us to go read Tome of Knowledge and all the work over there put in about the Land of the Dead expansion. It’s neatly summarised, and a fantastic resource.

And finally, over at Lagwar, there’s more misery at 1.2.1, listing bugs and problems that this patch has introduced to the game. I get the feeling I’d have experienced more of them if me and Spinks hadn’t been playing extremely casually and not really spending a huge amount of time in the game.

So you came back to Warhammer to look at patches 1.2 and 1.2.1, but your guild just isn’t the same as it once was. You wish for the days of a chatty, casual guild with under 50 members… you’re in luck, the new guild search interface has hit with patch 1.2.1 and both me and Spinks had a good old play with it last night while hitting open RvR in Tier 1 on Karak Azgal. It’s great, within 5 minutes I wanted all games I play to have one. And you can read up Spinks’ play-by-play guide to it over at her solo blog: Spinksville.

Today marks the launch of patch 1.2.1 on the American servers, which means it’ll be heading our way soon. I’ve not written all that much about it, because I’ve found it all a little overwhelming, but I know it heralds some big and important changes.

Keep upgrading should prove an interesting addition that’ll add some flavour to open RvR at higher levels and also provide some incentive for holding a keep for longer. I hope it works as planned, it sounds like some much-needed extra dimensions will be in-game shortly.

The Beyond the Sands live event launches with 1.2.1. I want to kill undead things, so I look forward to it. Goggles, however, will ruin my hair!

There’s a lot of general improvements, to the UI, to combat responsiveness and to the luck factor (somewhat), by the introduction of a token system of medallions for RvR. I really look forward to seeing how many medallions I can earn in an evening of RvR (and yes, I will take my r40 Rune Priest out for this test) and what I can buy for them. And of course, there’s the new Gates of Ekrund ‘arena’ (6v6 ranks 19-24), it sounds cool, but also scares me a bit, because I’m notoriously nervous about my abilities – but I know people really can’t wait for this, and I’m extremely interested in how it goes, I imagine it’ll be a surefire hit and people will always want an alt in these levels to do this (or to halt the xp gain if they could).

And I know all the class tweaks and changes will take some getting used to. But it marks yet another stage of Mythic taking on criticism and comment and working the game to make improvements all the time. And because of that, there’s only really one thing to say…